Vincenzo "Vinny" Ricci (born 1894) was a caporegime and gunsmith for the Salieri crime family. He became the family's gun expert and provider, giving out weaponry for its members during assignments.
Biography[]
Ricci was born to an Italian family in Sicily. As a young man, during the 1910s, Ricci enlisted into the Royal Italian Army and fought in World War I. However, he became a defector and left a short time later, immigrating to the United States and settling in Chicago. Through a relative of his, he joined the Peppone crime family led by Don Felice Peppone, and the same relative who introduced him to Peppone was murdered in 1921. Shortly thereafter, Peppone's empire fell down, and Ricci aligned with Peppone's former caporegime Ennio Salieri and his family. As Salieri's gunsmith and weapons man, Ricci used his wartime experience to acquire guns and provide them to Salieri's men, like Tommy Angelo, Paulie Lombardo and Sam Trapani.
In 1935, Ricci served as Salieri's war advisor in his conflict against the Chicago Morello crime family Don Marcu Morello, chasing after Morello's brother Sergio with Trapani, though he managed to escape, later being killed by Angelo. After Morello was killed, the Salieri family became the most powerful crime gang in the city, and Ricci organized the murder of Illinois gubernatorial candidate Hank Turnbull in 1938. Ultimately, after Angelo betrayed the family and turned state's evidence, Ricci was sent to prison on a number of criminal charges due to Angelo's testimony.